Disclaimer: House doesn't belong to me, all I have is my Microsoft Word.

He’s never alone in his dreams, not anymore; she’s always there with him. What disturbs him the most, he thinks, is the tenderness he sees in her eyes . It doesn’t belong there. At least, not when she looks at him.

“You’re dead,” he says, suddenly remembering. The details of the dream suddenly fragment and fade. She is always there, a constant, but there is always a different place.

“Yes,” she tells him. "Very dead." He feels her breath on his cheek as her hair makes a curtain around them; sealing them in together and blocking out the pain. He looks into her eyes, and sees himself looking back.

“Why are you here?” he asks. “You don’t even belong here.”

“And where do I belong?” she asks, smiling that Mona Lisa smile she seems to have perfected since she'd died. “Should I haunt Wilson’s dreams, instead?”

He doesn’t know how to answer that. Her death has left him without the right words. “I can’t do this,” he eventually says. “I can’t look at you.”

She touches his cheek, barely felt, and yet… familiar. “It’s okay, House,” she says. “You can wake up now.”

And he does. He wakes up and stares at the ceiling. He remembers the feel of her fingers in his grasp; the panic he felt as they were pulled away from him. He reaches for the Vicodin, swallows them dry, and then thinks of Wilson. He wonders if he’s having trouble sleeping too, and his mind shies away from that thought almost as neatly as the rest. Pain management can come in many forms.

He thinks he should try to get some more sleep, but then quickly dismisses the idea. Who was he trying to kid? The dull ache in his leg throbs, despite the medication, and he reaches for the Vicodin again.